SASO ORDANOSKI

The way things are going, we are on a good path of learning NOTHING also from this tragedy in the Tetovo Covid hospital.

Namely, the Government should have already issued a statement that it has ordered all institutions under its competence in the country to check their own capacities, equipment, procedures and plans in case of fire, and to recommend the same procedures to private companies and organizations as well.

For the competent state institution for fire protection (it has to have some official title) to announce that it will start an extraordinary inspection of several dozen randomly selected institutions – it would be good for the government building to find itself first on that list, followed immediately after by the White Palace, where the headquarters of the opposition is – for examination and possible sanctions for those responsible for non-compliance or oversights in those standards.

The municipalities, on the other hand, with these mayors whose mandates are ending, should immediately come up with some kind of a scheme to support citizens in purchasing fire extinguishers, as they are doing in the case with the inverters, cleaning of chimneys or buying bicycles, even if it that measure were to be valid after the elections.

Only in this way will the absurdness of the loss of so many lives in just three minutes in the Tetovo Hospital have any post-traumatic social sense.

In a similar context, as it seems to me, VMRO-DPMNE is on a right track of hitting the “tree”, missing the “forest” in regards to the Tetovo tragedy: they are so strongly preoccupied only and only with the resignation of Filipce, that nothing else interests them – and that “party vulturing” ultimately is mobilizing and raising the cohesion in SDSM around Zaev and Filipce much faster and better than is normal in such unpleasant political events.

The reactions of the general, non-partisan public, then again, we can only guess, since there is no relevant research on how and in which direction the public trends are moving now, but the situation is gaining obnoxiousness, on the one hand because of the numerous stories of many hospital experiences of patients and their relatives in the fight against Covid, and on the other hand, because of the bare struggle of politicians to take hold of power. Playing with the emotions of voters – that’s what VMRO-DPMNE is doing, in lack (still, the investigation is in progress) of elements for factual fault of Filipce – is always delicate, and therefore also a dangerous moral-political weapon that often knows to kill the one who in politics reaches for it. Ultimately, the public, in summary, has a better sense for the issues of dignity and measure of decency than the noise of the party machinery and their propaganda campaigns.

P.S In yesterday’s (13/9/2021) chronology of political resignations in the history of Macedonia, without evil intent – and also due to the fact that some took place in the pre-digital time in the world of archives – I have missed specifying several more resignations of Macedonian officials.

The first is the one of Dimitar Dimitrov, as Minister of Education and Science of the Expert Government in 1992, due to political disagreements with the then establishment in the government. By the way, his son and current Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs, Nikola Dimitrov, in 2000 resigned from the position Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Government of Ljubco Georgievski, as a result of the disagreements regarding the “Taiwan Adventure”. And, as Minister of Foreign Affairs Denko Maleski as well, resigned on two occasions: once after the adoption of the Lisbon Declaration in 1992 (his resignation was not accepted), and later in 1993 in the government of Crvenkovski, when his resignation was accepted, for the entry of the country in the UN under the reference “former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”, due to the great arguments in the Macedonian Assembly and Maleski’s speech on the need of political unity in that historic moment for the country.

I apologize for the unintentional oversight to the respected Dimitrovi and Maleski, and to you, dear readers.

All rights reserved. The text is the personal opinion of the author.

Translation: N. Cvetkovska